My Journey as a Quilter and Other Supporting Evidence, by Karoda (Karen R. Davis)

Sunday, March 15, 2009

A.I.R.

I can't locate my notes for Form Not Function so the review I wanted to share will not happen, at least not today. What I do recall is being totally perplexed by the quilt which received the Award for Social/Political Commentary given by Kathleen Loomis. I've taken 2 different friends on 2 seperate trips to help me figure it out...both who are socially/politically aware and neither of them could grip the message. The quilt was made by Shawn Quinlan and can be seen here on Quinlan's website. Ya know it bugs me when I don't get something that I don't want to miss. Does the flag in the water imply the U.S has drowned? or staked the territory? Are the children looking for the "fairy tale" of America with themselves not representing America but too naive/self-absorbed to know? Do they represent stupidity/innocents? I hope to see Loomis later in the week to get to the bottom of it all.

Last night was full of nightmares...most related to violence against women. Peter had to wake me up twice during the night. They all were the type of nightmares that I wasn't inside of but outside as if I was watching television. I remember I was banging on a clear thick window that was soundproof trying to yell to warn a group of women not to hide in the back of a truck...crazy sh*t...but I did watch briefly last night Joy Behar sitting in for Larry King and the topic was domestic violence.

Also since my last post, a friend sent me a link to a NYT review about Jenny Holzer's exhibit at the Whitney and then Jenclair (Jenclair blogs at Bayou Quilts, see side bar under The Neighborhood) sent me video links and a Huffington Post article about her work. Also I discovered a book I have on my Amazon list was actually a memoir by Faith Ringgold and also found these video links interviews with Elizabeth Catlettwhich thrilled me! The Sharecropper inspires me to consider working in realism. This has been a long recognizable print long before I knew who Catlett was. I like what she had to say about why she does art..."to know what others think about what I do"...a view that roots the artist within the community.

One of the books, okay truthfully, I've been vegging out on 2 of my poems included in a community arts project, a book of poems, essays, letters entitled Artists In Revolution (A.I.R.). There isn't an ISBN number as it was a community arts project initiated by Estella Majozo to create space and place for writers to be present together. I made a brief mention about my experience here. I'll get to the rest of the writers in the book in the coming weeks. The 2 poems I selected where chosen because they reference my children and I thought it would be good for them to know how much they've inspired my work. One is the often mentioned 725 West Saint Catherine poem that frequent readers here will know I'm currently writing on cloth and the other is a poem in 3 parts entitled Soulful Symbiosis that pays tribute to Peter's father who made his passing on Christmas day in 1995.

I've not set goals for being in the workshop next week...so my plan is to show up and see what happens.

3 Comments

I think your analysis of Shawn's piece is pretty close. All those cautions tapes show that we are throwing out these cautions about the environment, but the flag in the water represents our drowning in the face of reality. I think that Dick and Jane represent our lack of real information and intelligence about how desperate the situation is.

It is Sunday, it is rainy, I am tired - why have you made me use my brain? You always do and I really want to thank you for that.

My take is that I think the children represent the child-like American public, mostly naive and willfully uninformed or easily fooled, discovering to their surprise and amazement that nobody is "in charge" (the empty chair), no one is manning the helm of making the changes to protect our planet from the inevitable rising tide that will likely come as a result of global warming (the drowning US flag).